When an addiction sufferer enters rehab, they do so with the expectation they will get the help they need for a full recovery from their disease. What they don’t know is exactly how that help is going to be delivered. The reality is the addiction treatment community has moved away from a cookie-cutter approach to treatment.
There is consensus that one size fits all treatments are not as effective as they should be. That has led to recent innovations within the addiction treatment community. Today, an increasing number of treatment professionals are using treatment options like:
- Psychoanalysis
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)
- Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
This move towards evidence-based therapies has resulted in a decrease in the relapse rate for most drugs and alcohol. That’s very good news as the U.S. continues its war on drug and alcohol addiction. At this point, we want to focus on the last option from this list, that being Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
The theory behind Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is that addiction sufferers are sometimes victimized by their negative thoughts. It’s these negative thoughts that create within them the desire to hide behind a substance that causes them great harm but provides the escape they need. Using this theory as the basis for treatment, a therapist will start working with a client to identify patterns of negative thoughts. If there is ample evidence that the client’s negative thoughts are the proximate cause of them wanting to abuse a substance, the therapist will immediately employ the CBT treatment model.
The goal of CBT is very simple. The therapist wants to help their client identify the negative thoughts that are causing havoc and train the clients to convert those negative thoughts into positive thoughts. In theory, the client is far less likely to continues taking drugs or drinking alcohol if they have a better outlook on life. The question at hand is. “Can an Ohio Rehab use CBT as a stand-alone treatment option?” Let us try to answer that question below.
Is Rehabilitation in Ohio Successful with CBT Alone?
While it’s quite possible that a client might respond favorably to CBT treatment as a sole treatment method, it’s not common for a therapist to use such an approach. What a therapist who wants to use CBT will usually do is incorporate CBT as part of an overall treatment plan.
What seems to work very well for therapists is using evidence-based therapies in conjunction with holistic therapies. By holistic therapies, we are referring to options such as:
- Art and music therapy
- Meditation and yoga therapy
- Equine therapy (caring for horses)
- Acupuncture
- AcupunctureRecreation therapy
While employing both CBT and holistic therapies, the therapist is actually signaling they want to address the client’s overall wellbeing. That is essentially the reason holistic treatment options get included in the mix. The therapist is trying to train their clients to strive for healthier minds and bodies in order to build a better defense against future relapse.
The role CBT plays in this combined effort is to guide clients towards the development of better coping skills. The coping skills clients need the most are the skills to turn those negative thoughts into positive thoughts. By the way, that is not an easy thing for most clients to do. If they have been stuck in a cycle of negativity driving their substance abuse for any meaningful time, it is going to be hard for them to break away from that cycle. The good news is that once they do break away from that cycle, there is an excellent chance the negative behaviors will diminish.
To be clear, CBT could be a very useful option to use in conjunction with a lot of other treatment options. The reason CBT fits so well in other programs is that it is directed at one aspect of why a client might be caught up in the cycle of addiction. If negativity is the sole driving force behind a client’s desire to abuse substances, that’s the point when CBT might suffice as a stand-alone treatment option.
If you are suffering from a substance abuse problem, it’s your responsibility to think carefully about your circumstances. Before things get too bad, you might want to consider getting help. When you are ready to ask for help, we want to stand as your first treatment option. To discuss further, you can contact one of our staff members at 833-820-2922. During your initial phone call, we will be happy to tell you about our facility and explain the CBT process to you.